The third of July 2015 the solar airplane SolarImpulse lands in Haitii after a 5 days continuous flight 8500 Km , above the Pacific ,coming from Japan.

It will be the beginning of an extraordinary change in our way to think the way to think our future wireless equipments.

Now we will describe an immediate application around a French fable.

Mr DRAHI owner of Numericable/SFR launched a public bid for acquiring one of the other 4G operator ,Bouygues Telecoms
Proposal : €10 Billion.
Bouygues refused the €10 Billions offer.
One of he goal for Mr Drahi was to resale a part of the Bouygues business oints of sales,ground infrastructure to Free telecoms the last company that enters in the business with the very clever owner Mr Xavier Niel .
To complete the picture Free , has no ground infrastructure and is using the Orange one ,borrowing it for €500M/Year.
Now Mr Niel can call SolarImpulse guys to take the idea ,building a new “flying”infrastructure instead of spending $500M/year borrowing Orange infrastructure.
The BTS infrastructure requires heavy investment,.
For a very small GSM 2G network “old fashion” in Africa
CAP $ 200-250 k _OP $ 200k / year
Price of Open Source BTS is now much ,much lower.
Look at Ettus Research products,Range Network ,Yate BTS, Amarisoft etc…
These companies specializes in low-cost, high-quality software defined radio (SDR) systems can be tested ,mounted in the UAV cockpit.

I am not the inventor of the idea, brilliant entrepreneurs have traced the way:Google bought Titan Aerospace , Facebook Ascenta a small UK-based Solar UAV
SolarImpulse engineers are wearing jacket , on their collar you see:GOOGLE .
These companies do not often make mistakes.
In a relative confidentiality way ,Google tested his telecoms Loon Balloon .
An interesting model was described by the Dr. Jerry LeMieux for Internet distribution with Solar UAV.
A full coverage of Los Angeles, needs just 4 drones (1215 Km2) .
The annual income for an Internet service in Los Angeles is $4.68 Billion.
If the contractor using this technology takes only 10% of the market’s annual income will be $ 468m
Your drone investment is very low compared with ground infrastructure and maintenance.

Incidentally they show ,in the real life ,a solution for the telecoms operators.
13 years of hard to reach their fool idea :running an air plane just with the Solar “fuel”.
That July third of July 2015 is the start of a fantastic way for delivering wireless communications at cheaper price all over the world .

The SolarImpulse may be converted in a Solar UAV for LTE equipments.

All is existing in the SolarImpulse : Supervision of solar panel ,batteries charging ,control of the plane included, with an Intelsat satellite link.

Satellites manufacturers ,including the O3b peoples, be careful,Titan Aerospace gives to his “Solara 50 UAV “, the name of “atmospheric satellite,”

I don’t say that all the ground infrastructures will disappear.
I am far from being a dreamer ,all my life ,I worked on the field ,to put on wireless network ,with problems that we find in difficult countries .

Problems: administrative,technical ,have to be solved.

Note: The article was written the 3rd of July 2015.

After THE Nagoya to Hawaii flight it appears a problem :IRREVERSIBLE DAMAGE TO OVERHEATED BATTERIES IN SI2 .
As we know as technicians ,in technical matter, there is always a solution .
Be sure that the flight will continue ,the diagnostic is made ,the solutions are there ,just a little delay before the S2 will take off for the next flight.

Is it a new challenge ? A new telecoms model?
That is the question.

Eric Poussielgues.
07/03/2015
As I wrote le 3rd of July 2015 I think that the solar UAV is the “flying tower” of all radio communications .It solves all the problem we have in radio coverage projects.
Actually I am working on an over sea radicom project and your drone can be the future of LTE communications .
I have to look much deeper in your brochure to see what is the payload we can bus in your AtlantikSolar UAV.
Long live the bright Swiss
Best Regards et encore Bravo pour votre vol.
Eric Poussielgues